Amazon

The naturalist Leo E. Miller published an engaging record of his South American adventures in 1918 entitled In the Wilds of South America. We have previously related one of his adventures in Colombia, his quest for the elusive “cock of the rock” whose nesting places were perched over inaccessible, cavernous waterfalls. While he was in British Guiana, he received word that ex-president Theodore Roosevelt had received permission from the Brazilian authorities to explore the ominously-named Rio da Duvida in the Amazon; he would be guided in this effort by Brazil’s most famous living explorer, the indestructible Candido Rondon.

Men undertake explorations and great journeys for many reasons. Some expeditions–such as those undertaken by Denham, Burton, Burckhardt, and others like them–are primarily focused on expanding geographical knowledge, commercial information, and ethnographic data. Others, such as those of Humboldt, Rondon, Lewis and Clark, and von Barth, are more interested in the collection of scientific information about the natural world. The Brazilian explorations of Carl Friedrich von Martius falls into the latter category.